Word: zerlina
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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...created an enormously alluring, vital protagonist who pursues his appetites with cheerful disregard for law or morality. After forcing himself on a noblewoman, Donna Anna, he duels with her father, the Commendatore, and kills him. Then, while the Don busies himself mostly with trying to seduce the peasant girl Zerlina, Donna Anna joins forces with her fiancé Don Ottavio and another of the Don's conquests, Donna Elvira, to hound him through a series of comic entanglements, disguises and escapes. When a statue of the slain Commendatore comes to life and challenges the Don, he defiantly invites...
...Leporello, with the list stretching down the steps of his house and out into the garden; but José Van Dam's engaging Leporello is scarcely allowed to become the buffo scalawag that Mozart and Da Ponte had in mind. Edda Moser as Donna Anna, Teresa Berganza as Zerlina, Kenneth Riegel as Don Ottavio, all throw themselves into their roles with intensity, but only the exotic Kiri Te Kanawa, as Donna Elvira, manages to shake off some of Losey's heavy seriousness. Missing are the wit and verve, the "elate darting rhythms" with which Shaw said Mozart conveyed...
...diction in arias was mediocre. She was perfectly clear through the recitative so the problem is obviously not insoluble. She was at her best in Ah, Fuggi il Traditor, a Handelian rage aria complete with dotted rhythms, large interval leaps, and distinct bass line. In the peasant-girl Zerlina's role, Lisbeth Brittain was properly ingenuous and sang with a bright, light soprano voice...